


Enemy of My Enemy

by EclipseWing



Series: Supernatural Mix-Tape [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Crowley POV, Dead Sam and Dean, Demons, Gen, Hell, Mid S8 AU Divergence, Potential what-if fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 07:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7749295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EclipseWing/pseuds/EclipseWing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean finally die. For good.<br/>Crowley is relieved beyond anything but someone should have warned him the relief would be short-lived.</p><p>Or: Nobody really considered where the Winchester Brothers would end up when they’d die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enemy of My Enemy

“They’re _what_?”

“Dead, sir.”

He wanted proof. He wanted to see their bodies lying before him with lifeless eyes. He wanted to peel their flesh off, dig out their eyes, their hearts, their spleen and feed them to his hounds.

The demon minion found more than that to give him. He found him the burnt-out husk of the car rotting in a scrap yard that Crowley had seen when it had still be a usable scrap yard. He showed Crowley the still bodies, chests torn open and so mangled it was hard to tell what did them in.

Crowley didn’t really care. He leaned back in his chair and watched as the bodies were dumped into deep storage. “They’re still dead?” he checked periodically, and every time he got an affirmative.

“Still dead?”

“Than a doorknob.”

He knew what the pair were like. But one month passed. Two. Three. Four. A year. No angel appeared to resurrect them. No Castiel knocked down his door to flash angel wings at him and bring Sam and Dean Winchester gasping back into life. No Reaper slipped through his wards. No brother stood at a crossroads. No monster tripped their way out of Purgatory.

One year. Two. Three. Four.

They stayed dead.

Crowley allowed himself a celebratory sip of whiskey when he reached five years and Sam and Dean Winchester were still dead.

 “I win.” He tasted the word, “So I win.” He smirked. “Nice game boys, but this one… is mine.”

 

Ruling Hell was hard. The ruling part, not so much. A few tortured demons there, a few dead demons here, a few hounds sicced on the more embarrassing minions… it was all in a day’s work.

Trying to broker deals with angels was harder. It was easier to stay out of their way. Trying to stay out of Abaddon’s way was harder still. It was impossible to know where the Knight of Hell has appeared from, but she was back with a bloodlust that was impossible to satiate.

Hell stayed generally peaceful, which in itself is conflicting for Hell, but after Crowley’s last venture to stretch his ambition had resulted in black goo monsters taking over the world, he kept himself in check. World Domination only worked if there was a world to dominate.

There needed to be some source of souls after all.

He kept Hell running smoothly, the crossroads deals and even the occasional random possession.

Hell was Hell.

The gangly teenager hovering in front of his desk with spots and limp greasy hair and a chin that stuck out too far didn’t fit the Hell image at all. Crowley should see about getting his quivering underlings some better meatsuits. Or maybe he should just stick them down in the pit for some more time queueing.

Demons just weren’t what they used to be, and Crowley’s never sure whether to be relieved that there are no power-grabbing bitches like Meg or ancient monstrous white-eyes like Lilith or Abaddon or disappointed.

Hell was Hell except when it wasn’t and except when it was predicatable.

“Uh… sire?” the demon underling chokedout.

“I haven’t been listening to you for the past five minutes,” Crowley admitted, “Start again and don’t babble or I’ll rip out your tongue.”

The underling trembled, “There are new demons in Hell.”

“There are new demons all the time,” Crowley swirled his scotch around in the tumbler, “Your point?”

“They’re… different.”

Crowley’s interest peaked, then waned in suspicion, “Different how?”

“P-powerful.” Oh god, he was stuttering now, “Strong. Scary…”

“And I’m not scary?” Crowley growled out.

“They’re like Azazel,” the demon blurted out what he’d been dancing around. “They’re like the old ones, like Azazel, or Alistair and the Pit… the Pit’s changing to their needs.”

Crowley stilled his alcohol, “I’m sorry,” he said, voice dangerous, “I thought you just said that they’re redesigning my Hell.”

The short sharp nod was the end of demon underling #57. He dies was an angel blade through his throat. Crowley sighed as his exotic red rug got another re-dye. It had started off life a pleasant white.

He really had to stop murdering demons on it.

New demons, he considered, well he’d just have to show them their place.

He was the king, after all.

 

Hell was his.

Hell had been his the moment Lucifer had been thrown back into jail with his big brother. Hell had been his and Crowley had shaped it to his needs. No more chains and hellfire. Hell was circles going down deep deep deep and Crowley turned it into his castle.

Hell wasn’t a place. Hell was a concept. A state of mind. Crowley’s concept was endless waiting, a throne and a kingdom.

Lilith and Azazel’s concept had been a lake of fire. Crowley stopped and stared when he found that at the lower reaches of his castle there was red molten lava slowly eating away at his foundations.

This wasn’t possible. Hell was his. No upstart newcomers could just redesign it to their will. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t allowed.

Crowley wouldn’t let it be allowed.

He walked through the fiery pit unafraid. He was king after all.

When humans picture Hell, this, he thought, was what they pictured. This was Pandaemonium at its finest. Wastelands miles wide that never ended. Fire and heat and rocks that scorched your feet. Volcanoes and slated walls that scratch and tear at your skin. Beds of thorns and poisons.

He knew of a few powerful enough to reshape Hell. But of the white-eyes, two were dead and the other two had escaped Hell long ago. The last he had heard Asmodeus was self-absorbed and Lirael was in cahoots with Lilith.

Abaddon wasn’t in Hell. The rest of the Knights were dead, which was just a plain relief. They were hard to kill. Like bugs. They were such a mix of black human soul smoke and fallen angel not much made their death stick.

The rest of the Fallen Angels, the pure ones, the ones that fell with Lucifer… Crowley doesn’t know much about that. Azazel was long-dead, he’d thank the Winchester’s for that. A Fallen with Orange Eyes had cavorted about in the 70’s only to vanish too. Samhain had been some sort of Pagan God turned dark-side, but either way he was dead too. The few others Crowley heard about were locked up deep deep in the Pit. In the bowels of his castle dungeons. Or in the ice encrusted cage buried in miles of pure rock.

Maybe one had escaped. Crowley didn’t think he stood much chance against a Fallen Angel, but he had an angel blade on him. He’s also not king for nothing, and he has a few minions around to die for him.

Not that he actually expected them to die. Not that he actually expected a smoke-black shadow to step out from a rocky chasm, bleeding from torn muscles and bloodshot eyes and to cut down two before he even realised she was there.

“They’ve been expecting you,” she said, accent still sharp after all these years, “Just you. Your minions can wait here.”

“Abby,” Crowley greeted her. He remembered all - well, most - of the souls he’d made deals with, “You look well.”

The demon-girl snarled. She still looked human. Ish. She had black eyes and peeling skin. He could see her muscle in one section, where the skin had been picked neatly away, and the bone of her collar where no flesh grew.

Crowley was suddenly very aware that this was not his part of Hell. Reality was bent. Twisted. Deep black rock wrapped around him, coals encrusted with red blood coloured jewels clawing out. The demon-girl’s image flickered, twisting into a harpy eagle with broken bone wings and a wickedly curved beak.

“You have a new boss,” he realised.

She grinned. The beak clicked and reality bent and she was relatively human again. He could see the muscle through her cheeks when she smiled, “It took you long enough to work that out. Sweetie. Go on. They’re dying to see you,” she laughed.

The demon that had once been Bela Talbot stepped back. Her breath was sulphur and rotting roses.

For the first time since heading down here, Crowley felt a flicker of fear at what awaited him.

The ground shifted under his feet. Rocks scattered down the cliff and sparks of lava spurt up with a poisonous cloud of sulphur around it. “Do you like it?” Bela stalked behind he sedately, “It’s not as refined as your castle, sure, but me? I think it’s more truthful to itself. More real. This is Hell. Not barricades, no pretences. You make your way through this?” she paused to let a scream echo from a dark tunnel through the rock, “You know what you are,” Bela laughed. It sounded like grating rocks on a chalkboard.

Crowley chanced a glance back at her. Her form flickered again, and she barely noticed. It was as if she had forgotten what she had looked like, forgotten what it meant to be human. Crowley maintained the image of his host because it was better. More refined, as Bela had said.

Her form flickered back to human, as she unconsciously clawed to keep the image of who she had once been.

In dark corners souls screamed in agony. Some were nothing more than black smoke.

They had long forgotten what they used to look like.

Hell hounds stalked past him, glittering eyes and slavering jaws and he knew that these dogs weren’t from his pack. They bared their teeth at him and he ignored them, trying not to let his unease show.

The earth shook again. Rocks tumbled down the scree slope and it took Crowley a while to realise that they weren’t rocks. They were bones. And that parts of the slope weren’t rock at all, but blackened charred human bodies, writhing in agony.

A dark shape slipped from the shadows. Souls and demons scattered out of the way of the large cat that bounded out of the gloom. Its eyes were green, and it might have potentially been classified as a leopard, if not for the bone and muscle showing through the flesh and the black that it faded in and out of like shadow. Its tail was a scorpion’s sting, part of the bone of its shoulder was showing through and the blood it bled was black ichor.

It paced up to him, lips curling back in a snarl, tail flicking from side to side.

Behind him Bela scuttled away too quickly, and Crowley glanced behind looking alarmed but she was already gone. Run. From this demon.

When he looked back around the leopard was gone, and Dean Winchester was smirking at him.

“Hey’a Crowley. Long-time no see,” his smile was razor sharp and his eyes glowed eerie mercury green. “Or do you prefer ‘your majesty’?”

“Dean,” Crowley didn’t lose his composure. His heart was dead but it still raced nervously. He kept his chin up, taking in the elder Winchester brother. Taking in the human form, the burns and the scars and the torn pieces of flesh hanging off him. Taking in the black in those green green eyes and the teeth that look more animal than human. Taking in the way the brother’s image shimmers, dancing back to the monstrous leopard and back to some poor semblance of humanity.

Crowley cleared his throat.

“Fancy seeing you here. I thought you had a place in the clouds.”

Dean’s laugh at that was bitter and twisted. Demonic, Crowley realised, and he took a slow step back, pretending to examine the rugged form of the once-hunter. He looked like he did in life if not for the bloody scars spaced across his body, or the way the eyes glowed an eerie green. “Do you really think…?” and Dean took a step forwards to make up for the one Crowley had gained, “That after what we did to the angels, they’d let us stay in Heaven… even if they let us through the gates?”

That was when Crowley became aware of the footsteps behind him, the shifting of stones and the wail of souls. “ _We_?” he asked anyway, but he turned just in time to see the slinking of dark shadows change from a large wolf-like dog to the lanky form of Sam Winchester, his eyes a pale green. Too pale. Too eerie. Almost a lime coloured.

Almost yellow.

Black burned behind the green, and if there was some semblance of humanity in either of them then there was too much demon smoke to see it clearly.

Too much Hell stain.

Crowley wondered how he could have been so blind.

“That’s it? Silence and an open mouth, Crowley, I’m disappointed,” Sam clicked his tongue, stalking around to join his brother, “No ‘Hello Boys’? After all this time, that’s how you greet your old friends…” he paused, head tilting like a puppy.

Or maybe not like a puppy. Like a wolf.

Like a predator. A hunter. “Well… old enemies might be more accurate.”

Crowley didn’t know who to focus on… which one was the most dangerous. Sam wasn’t even acting that demon-like. He looked calm and thoughtful with a hunt of sadism that stank of Azazel. In comparison Dean looked more like a typical demon, already clawing bloody patterns into his own skin as he watched Crowley, looking like he’d enjoy doing that to the King himself. The psychopathic undertones that had always been present, buried deep in the older brother were clear to see now.

Where Sam reminded Crowley of Azazel, Dean was all Alistair, smiles and razor sharp grins with dead eyes and he thought that was almost worse.

“I didn’t know you were in Hell,” Crowley said calmly.

“I’ve been here before,” Dean reminded him, and Crowley glanced between them, between black-and-green-and-silver-and-yellow eyes, “I know how to stay out of the spot light.”

“Know how to torture too,” Crowley couldn’t resist baiting them, “Look at how far you’ve fallen.”

“Are we meant to be hurt?” Sam asked, dropping into a casual sprawl on an outcrop of rock. It cuts his skin, but he barely appeared to notice, eyes too demon-like, body too hell-ruined, mind too-broken, “Because I think we’re a little far gone for that.”

Crowley had never considered what would happen to the Winchesters when they died. Only that’s they’d be dead and out of his hair.

Now he stood between the demonic forms of Sam and Dean Winchester and he found that thought ironic.

It turned out that the pair _could_ cause more trouble for him beyond the graves.

Trust Sam and Dean to never follow demon protocol.

(And if they stole their own bodies from the deep freeze morgue after getting out of Hell he was totally pretending he had nothing to do with any of that.)

(He may just send Abaddon their way though and see what happens.)


End file.
